Despite Slam Dearth, Federer Looms as a Wimbledon Favorite

Roger Federer at the Halle Open this month. A win at Wimbledon would be Federer’s seventh, which would tie the men’s record.Credit
Ina Fassbender/Reuters

WIMBLEDON, England — The Grand Slam drought grows longer for Roger Federer. He has remained a serial winner elsewhere, but he has not won one of the four titles that matter most since January 2010 and has not reached a final at a Grand Slam event for more than a year.

But with Wimbledon beginning Monday, the lure of Federer’s enduringly elegant game and blockbuster tennis résumé remains powerful.

Insiders like the former Wimbledon champion John McEnroe and the top-flight coach Darren Cahill are still picking Federer to win, ahead of the defending champion, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal, younger stars who have surpassed him in ranking and Grand Slam relevance in the last three seasons.

Federer, who turns 31 in August, also continues to wax optimistic. Even though he has lost in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon in his last two visits, he maintains that this should be his time of year: a time when playing conditions are quicker; a time when aggressive shot-making reaps more rewards; a time when he can tie Pete Sampras and William Renshaw for the men’s record by winning his seventh Wimbledon title.

“You think, man, if you’ve been able to do it six times, you can do it seven; it’s just logic, right?” Federer said in an interview with a small group of reporters at Wimbledon on Saturday. “But I’m aware of how difficult it is, and it’s up to me to raise my game to do it again.”

Even if he falters again, he will be able to chase history on the same grass courts three weeks later during the London Olympics as he tries to win a gold medal in singles to go with the gold he won in doubles with his Swiss compatriot Stanislas Wawrinka in 2008.

Controlled aggression is what allowed Federer to win a record 16 Grand Slam singles titles. But it is also what has knocked him out of Wimbledon the last two years, with the huge-hitting Tomas Berdych upsetting him in the quarterfinals in 2010 and the flashy Jo-Wilfried Tsonga last year becoming the first man to overcome a two-set deficit against Federer in a Grand Slam tournament.

“I want to do better,” Federer said Saturday at a news conference. “I have to do better in this event because I could have gone further the last couple. Maybe a bit unfortunate at times. Maybe the other guys were just too good. Maybe I wasn’t quite at my best. Who knows what the combination was?

“But it’s up to me to make that difference now and take it to the next step. Then once hopefully I am there, I can reach for the title. I think that would be tying Pete, which I think would be absolutely fantastic, obviously, you know, admiring Pete when I was younger.”

It would also allow Federer to settle a statistical score. If Federer wins Wimbledon, he will return to the No. 1 ranking. That would be a tribute to his remarkable rate outside the Grand Slam events in the last year, when he has won seven tour titles.

For now Sampras holds the record with 286 weeks atop the men’s rankings. Federer remains just one week behind, at 285.

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There are other potential parallels. Sampras went more than two years without a major title before winning the 2002 United States Open, at age 31.

That, however, turned out to be his last tournament on tour. For now, there is no hint of a last hurrah in Federer’s demeanor or planning. He has already mapped out nearly all of his schedule in 2013 and intends to start working on 2014 in the months ahead.

“I’m always two years ahead,” he said. “I’m: ‘O.K., where are we going to play? How are we going to get there? What collection am I going to wear?’ It’s all already the big machinery that’s working for me, so it’s normal to look ahead.

“Obviously, there’s a short-term goal: I want to win Wimbledon. But in the big scheme of things, it’s the long-term goal. And I think that’s the one that keeps me in a good state mentally.”

There have been potential distractions of late. Federer and his longtime agent, Tony Godsick, left the agency IMG this month. But Godsick is by Federer’s side at the All England Club. He said Saturday that he would continue to manage Federer, although it remained unclear whether they would operate independently or join another agency.

“Obviously I did go through a period where I didn’t have a coach; I went through a period I didn’t have management,” Federer said of his early career. “I went through a period where I had other problems and things I had to deal with, so this right now is very easy, to be honest, all of the things that I’ve gone through with Tony.”

As president of the ATP Player Council, Federer has also been at the forefront of negotiations with leaders of the Grand Slam tournaments as the players lobby for a greater percentage of revenue. Although Nadal resigned from the council earlier this year, citing a need to focus on his career, Federer has stayed in his position and was elected by the players this week to serve a third two-year term on the council.

Federer said he was involved, in large part, to give back to the game. “It does take its time; it does have its pressures,” he said. “I think it’s important for me to be in the inner circle of things rather than in the outer circle and hear things rumoring around.”

For now, the rumor at Wimbledon is that Federer still has what it takes to win a big one. The first step toward proving that right comes Monday, when he is scheduled to face Albert Ramos, an unseeded Spaniard, in the first round.

A version of this article appears in print on June 24, 2012, on Page SP4 of the New York edition with the headline: Despite Slam Dearth, Federer Looms as a Favorite. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe